Flames of the Sun
by peroxidepest17
Summary: The one where Dean doesn't have to defend his honor because Sam does it for him. A companion piece to "Phases of the Moon."


**Title:** Flames of the Sun  
**Universe:** Supernatural  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Character/Pairing/s:** Sam and some DeanxCas  
**Spoilers/Warnings:** Spoilers through most of S5; some homophobia and general nastiness.  
**Word Count:** 5,530  
**Summary:** Follow up to "Phases of the Moon"- The one where Dean doesn't have to defend his honor because Sam does it for him.  
**Dedication:** to Tanya! Thank you again for your generosity and encouragement! I hope you enjoy this (if you don't let me know, I'll fix it somehow LOL). Sorry it took so long… 3  
**A/N:** Clearly if I had been in charge of S6 it would have been mostly ridiculous and happy. I am boring that way, but I could use some effing happy right now. SO HERE I WROTE A QUICK BIT OF HAPPY.  
**Disclaimer:** No harm or infringement intended.

* * *

Dean has never been the type of person to care very much about what strangers think about him, mostly because he knows—he _knows— _he can beat the crap out of most of those strangers if they try to get smart with him, or if they threaten him, or if they even look at him sideways and he happens to be in a bad enough mood to goad them into starting something that he'll undoubtedly end up being the one to finish. (Which is, for the record, more often the case than not, if Sam's telling the truth. Dean is a showoff.)

And that's all fine, okay; that all makes sense. Dean is a real live badass. Sam had been there for _most_ (obviously not _all_) of Dad's more important combat lessons growing up, so Sam _also_ knows that Dean can back up his swagger perfectly. Sam isn't bragging or anything when he says that his big brother can probably beat up about 99% of the general population of humans—and most of the monsters— in the country. Sam's seen enough Hong Kong action movies to seriously doubt whether his brother can beat up Shaolin monks or someone like Jackie Chan, which is the only reason why he's sticking to the continental US for the time being. He hopes the monsters in Asia don't know Kung Fu, because that would be an unstoppable force.

Anyway.

Dean is scary and can beat people up. He kills monsters for a living so the whole being intimidating thing kind of makes perfect sense. Lesser beings instinctively look at Dean and shy away from the Dean Winchester Glare of John Winchester Inherited Menace, especially when it is used in combination with the Dean Winchester Shoulders of John Winchester Inherited Broadness.

And even though Sam is bigger than Dean and has inherited those very same shoulders and can, on occasion, even drum up a fair rendition of the very same Menace, people are—for some unknown reason—a lot less afraid of him than they are of his big brother on initial glance.

Dean has always said that it's all in the walk. If you walk like you can beat someone else in a fight, then they'll sense it, or something, and back the hell off more times than not. Apparently there's a science to walking like a badass that makes people think twice about messing with you. Dean used to do it in high school all the time, when other, crueler kids might have otherwise picked on him for being weird or being poor or for having to go home early all the time to watch his dorky kid brother instead of joining the football team or hanging with the seedy looking kids that loitered out on street corners and smoked cigarettes after school (apparently Dean could have gone either way in high school, clique wise). So yeah. Dean has never cared what anyone outside of his family thinks, has always walked like he can break someone's spine one-handed, and as such, has gotten to where he is today pretty okay because of it, all things in their wacky Winchester lives considered.

The point, Sam supposes, is that Dean gives off scary motherfucker vibes a lot of the time. Unless, of course, you're a pretty woman or child or cute fluffy animal (puppies love Dean so much they follow him all over town even when he's afraid of them, don't forget). He's also got that alpha-alpha male thing going on for him, the kind of aura that makes dads instinctively want to lock up their daughters and women drop their panties. It's the thing about Dean that makes Sam actually stop and shut it when Dean glares at him and tells him to shut it (nine times out of ten, anyway), even though Sam is so much bigger than him.

Dean has always been like this. His brother is like the Samuel L. Jackson of hunters, or something. Ridiculously confident in his abilities to the point of making everyone else second guess themselves.

So given all the evidence that says otherwise, Sam does not understand why the world suddenly thinks all of that—all those years of terrifying Dean badassery—are suddenly null and void the moment Dean's big gay angel love is accidentally outed in public. It's not like Dean stopped walking like he can kick your ass suddenly, and it's definitely not like the alpha-male pheromones or whatever suddenly disappeared into thin air the minute Dean gets seen making out with a dude. And yet. And yet, _people seem to think this is how the world works_. Yeah, he beat up a bunch of dudes yesterday, but that was before they'd known he was _gay_, but now that they know that, obviously they can kick his ass _now_.

Sam can only conclude that people as a whole are mostly stupid.

To explain, there had been things today. And they had happened. As is usually the case with the Winchester Way of Life.

More specifically, a town in the middle of bumfuck Nebraska had been experiencing a rash of spontaneous musicals that had further lead to spontaneous killing sprees afterwards because apparently, when you sing it's with what's truly in your heart or some bullshit like that, and a lot of people hadn't liked what they'd heard from their hearts or the hearts of their nearest and dearest.

Ridiculous? Of course. This is Sam's life.

And while he's on the subject of ridiculous, let it be known that while all witches suck, teenage witches who have watched _High School Musical_ and _Glee_ one too many times are the worst witches of all witches to ever practice their wicked, witchy ways.

Anyway, it's a long, drawn out story, but apparently a cute, teenaged choral club member named Betty had cast some sort of cockamamie spell to learn whether or not her boyfriend Roy was her one true love after all, and whether she should gift him with the precious entity that is her virginity as a result. Naturally, all sorts of wacky things had backfired from her amateur magic after that, leading to the situation with the random musicals (apparently Betty had thought it would be _way _romantic if Roy proved to be her one true love by singing the harmony to her heart's duet). The magic from her wacky spell had ended up seeping into the town's water or something like that (the metaphysical explanation had been taken on by Castiel, and as such, had been vague and unhelpful at best), and from there, everyone in town had promptly lost control of not only their brain-mouth filters, but of their emotions as well, and basically started doing whatever struck their fancy in the form of a song-and-dance number. In more cases than not, the aftermath of a person pouring out the truth in their heart's song to someone close to them had involved a lot fewer happy endings than the movies would have you believe. The bashing in of the skull of a cheating boyfriend, a staple-gun to the throat of a backstabbing coworker, or, in one of the more bizarre music-to-murder scenarios, a hit and run— and then hit again and again and again— of a woman's neighborly newspaper thief, had all of them, been the more common forms of denouement from the spell's musical workings.

Blah, blah, blah. Long story short, they'd been heading down the middle of Main Street, Sam and Dean and Castiel all together, when Dean had suddenly stopped walking and burst out into a ballad that had sounded a lot like a cheesy, man-painful rip off of Beyonce's "_Halo._" Sam had been totally weirded out by _just_ _that _naturally, but then Cas had chimed in with a perfect harmony at the first chorus before taking over the lead vocals at the bridge, and from there, Sam had been forced to stand on the sidelines with the rest of the town's inhabitants, gaping like a fish as his brother and their friendly neighborhood angel had been busy serenading the world about their epic gay love to each other in the middle of the street in a town with less than two thousand people who all proclaimed to be in possession of good, Christian values. Sam thinks that maybe stopping at the end of the song to make out at the center of a crosswalk as the sun had blazed bright and golden overhead and the birds were chirping in the trees like they were all in some big gay Disney movie probably hadn't helped to endear Dean or Cas to the locals either, but hell, it's not like they'd been hurting anything but Sam's eyes when they were doing it.

Anyway, Roy _had_ ended up singing to Betty in the end, a song Sam is tentatively titling _"I'm Sleeping With Your Little Sister,"_ which had, besides being completely illegal, also led to Roy getting his head bashed in by Betty's music stand, and by the time Cas had found the little locket full of herbs and dead animal bones responsible for this catastrophe in Betty's locker and burned it, Roy was dead and their teenage witch had already tossed herself off of the roof of the school in a fit of adolescent despair.

Tragic, but for the most part, one and done.

It could have gone better, but in retrospect, Sam supposes it could have gone a lot worse too. He would not have wanted to be within a fifty mile radius of this place if Cas hadn't started singing back to Dean on Main Street, for example.

All in all, a pretty okay hunt then, by their standards. None of them had gotten stabbed.

Really, the only part in today's musical proceedings that had caused any sort of injury slash trauma to a member of TFW had occurred just after the romantic Main Street interlude and right before the explosive grand finale, when Dean had nearly been mauled to death by the high school's entire cheer squad, all in uniform and synchronize dance-stripping a lusty, _"I'm Almost Legal, Handsome Stranger" _to the elder Winchester in the school hallway. The number had apparently been complete with choreography reminiscent of 90s era Britney Spears mini-skirt writhing and Sam is super glad he missed it.

But yeah. The cheerleaders had kicked Dean's ass.

"What? They were flippy little bitches," is how Dean explained it all afterwards, when Cas was clucking worriedly at him and helping him pick up strips of his shirt from the floor and healing the nasty scratches and the bite marks on his abdomen that he'd sustained after he'd been forced to power ballad the girls his answer to their indecent proposition in the form of the _"It's Okay To be Gay (For Columbo)" _remix. The cheerleaders hadn't liked his answer naturally, had attacked en masse in a fit of jilted rage, and nearly did what thousands of monsters, demons, and ghosts had thus far been unable to accomplish over 30 plus years. All of this occurred in the short time Sam, Dean, and Cas had split up to find Betty's locket.

Luckily there's an angel perched in Dean's ass, or those cheerleaders might have really hurt him. But since the angel in his ass is an incredibly vigilant one all ends well for Dean—Cas even fixes his shirt for him—and better yet, the singing spell is officially off the books well before the end of the day. There are no more random musicals followed by random homicides to worry about in this sleepy little Midwestern town, and all Sam is left with is the slightly huge realization that the big gay duet he'd witnessed earlier means that Dean and Cas are officially each other's One True Love or something, and that the three of them all know it now.

Sam thinks that the look in Dean's eyes as he climbs into the Impala is as bright as the sun.

* * *

They don't leave the town right away.

Dean, in another one of his not caring (or, as Sam suspects, not even _noticing_) what other people think of him moments, had declared that since they'd paid for the hotel room through the morning they might as well stay the night, celebrate another victory for TFW, and indulge Cas in his newly discovered love of bar food, spicy hotwings in particular.

Dean grins at his brother and his angel then, all hopeful anticipation for spending time together and having fun without worrying about something trying to kill them, and in so doing, effectively alpha-male swaggers Sam into shutting up about how he thinks that might not be such a great idea after what had happened in the middle of the street earlier. He keeps his reservations to himself and hopes nothing goes wrong. Maybe he's over thinking things. He tells himself to be optimistic.

This, he knows, should be a futile effort simply for the fact that he is a Winchester.

And so here they are.

In small town Nebraska, sitting at a little hole in the wall called Mo's Bar and Sports Grill just off of Main Street, scant yards away from where the big duet had taken place.

Dean and Cas are sitting across from each other and Dean is perusing the happy hour menu while Cas is nursing a pinkish raspberry mojito because apparently he likes tart things with bright colors (he says the colors taste great, which makes no sense to anyone but him). A basket of some concoction the tavern lovingly calls Mo's Hotwings from Hell sits fragrant and steaming between Righteous Man and Lover Angel. Sam absently munches on one of the wings while Dean and Cas don't seem to notice that the basket has since been put on the table, probably because they're too busy shooting each other warm looks, like they'd never actually stopped singing their heartsong to one another for a second since they'd started it in public a few hours ago.

In congruence with their unawareness of their deep fried, butter-rolled foodstuffs getting cold on the table in front of them, neither of them seems to be aware of the increasingly sinister atmosphere of the surrounding establishment either, said sinister vibes namely coming from the contingency of glaring men situated at the bar, by the pool tables.

The contingency seems very displeased with the Winchesters' continued presence in town.

Sam would say something about maybe getting out of here before trouble starts, but Cas and Dean are having telepathic mind-sex for all Sam knows, and there's this thick bubble of contentment around them that makes him want to gag on instinct because it feels like the border between the Real World, where Sam lives, and the Land of Fuzzy Puppies, Hearts and Flowers, where Cas and Dean don't exactly live, per se, but where they like to vacation at whenever they're within two feet of one another.

In other words, it looks like they notice jack squat about the unwelcome vibes coming from the bar.

In the meantime, despite the early summer sun blazing hot and high through the windows of the bar and right into Sam's face, the outside of the Dean and Cas Bubble is getting progressively chillier and chillier for him, and, as Sam would like to note, more populous as the afternoon wears on.

To borrow a phrase that Brady had used a lot before he'd gone all evil, Sam thinks that this is one of those moments where _shit's about to get real, son_.

Sam recognizes Pete Graff at the head of the gathering contingency, Pete being a local farmer that Dean had knocked out yesterday, before the man had been able to stab his daughter's boyfriend with a pitchfork after he'd been forced to listen to the kid's pop-country dance tune (again, tentatively titled by Sam as _"No Sir, Your Baby Girl Ain't a Virgin No More")_ at the local feed store. Pete is flanked by three of his farm hands, the nameless guy Dean had called too stupid to live who works at the local post office, and the town's mechanic, plumber, and gas station attendant.

They look like they're working on mustering up enough burning bigotry to storm over to the Winchesters' table and try to run the three of them out of town in the name of God and decency and the sanctity of marriage or something.

Sam almost feels sorry for them. It's not like any of them _know_ that the wimpy looking guy in the trench coat probably gets to judge whether or not their eternal souls get into heaven or not from here on out. They probably also have no idea that Cas can explode their heads with a thought if he wants to either.

When the posse starts getting into what Sam recognizes as some sort of hick marching formation, he hastily excuses himself from the table—not like Cas and Dean notice or anything—and goes to intercept.

Sam is the best brother in the world, okay. He does not want this dumbassery to affect Dean and Cas's big "so you're my soulmate" lunch. Or lead to exploding hicks all over his hotwings.

So Sam goes right up to the bar, stops in front of Pete and the boys, and says, flatly, "You probably shouldn't do what you're obviously about to do." It is a fair warning. His shoulders are huge.

The group stares at him. Pete glares, obviously not intimidated by Sam's sheer size, his determined stare, or his Winchester shoulders. "We don't want the likes of you in this town. We raise children here," Pete says evenly.

Sam is wildly indignant at that. "Well we don't want to _be_ here either," he shoots back, and is not afraid to let the Stanford snob come out in his voice when he does. "I mean, do you guys really think people _want_ to come to a place like this? I bet your children don't even want to be here."

Okay, that might have been pushing it, but to be fair, Sam hadn't gotten to sing at all today, so maybe these are all his honest to God (or Cas or whatever) feelings coming out after the fact. He'd always been a little slower on the uptake than Dean when it comes to these types of things. You know, Dean makes out with a demon a year before Sam does, Dean goes to hell a year before Sam does, Dean gets pulled out of hell by an angel _two_ years before Sam does. It's like he's always standing just a foot or two behind Dean and working hard to catch up.

Thinking things like that make Sam pretty sure he's doomed to always be following in his big brother's footsteps, and all he can do is hope that he doesn't decide to make out with an angel sometime in the near future because of it as well, mostly since the only angel that's left that can really stand people is that sleazy creep Balthazar, and as far as Sam's concerned, he's even douchier than Gabriel had been, which says a lot about how much douche is involved here. Eugh.

Anyway, the point is, Sam's words to Pete kind of come out more like word vomit than anything else, except without the catchy hook that all of everyone else's word vomit had come accompanied by earlier, which really, is just Sam's luck.

Sam can tell by the way Pete and Co. are taking things that they are not happy with his assessment of their God-fearing little burb. Which, okay, might be Sam's fault for real there.

Sam backtracks quickly and reminds himself that he's supposed to be the diplomatic Winchester brother. Dean cares too little to try in cases like this and Cas just _doesn't know how_.

"Look," Sam sighs, putting his hands up in a sign of surrender, "I know you're probably weirded out by my brother and his uh…boyfriend, but they're not hurting anyone, and really, we're going to be gone first thing in the morning. Do you really want to start a fight you might not be able to finish?" Sam appeals to Pete, because Pete is the one who had cried uncle earlier, when Dean had an arm wrapped around his throat and an elbow in his back to keep him from beating young Charlie Birch to death with a pitchfork at the feed store. Dean had not gone easy on him because Pete is a very bulky individual.

Pete scowls, rubbing sorely at his neck at the reminder. If anything, the look in his eyes goes even darker as he glares at Sam. "Those two are an affront to the Lord," is what he says next, while the members of his little gang nod in disgusted agreement.

"Um, I'm pretty sure I have it on good authority that God doesn't care what they do," Sam says. God has bigger problems to deal with. Chief amongst which is learning to be less of an asshole. Sam hopes God is off somewhere reflecting on his own shortcomings while Cas is running the show. Sam hopes God gave himself a timeout and is thinking about what he did and feeling very sorry for it.

"You're a blasphemer," the stupid guy from the post office chimes in then, and steps in front of Pete to glare up at Sam. Sam is like a foot taller than him. How does no one find him scary. _How_.

Maybe he should get a haircut.

Sam sighs and runs a hand over his eyes. "Okay. Okay. Look. After everything that's happened in town, the last thing we need is more violence, right?" he begins, reasonably. "Seriously. We're just eating a little, and drinking a little, and we'll be out of your hair before you know it. It's not like two people just eating together is offensive to you, right?" He gestures vaguely behind himself as if to signify the harmlessness of two dudes sharing a basket of hotwings.

The posse looks dubious. "Yeah, but _look_ at them," the local mechanic—Bob, according to his shirt—says, as he glances over Sam's shoulder towards the corner booth where Dean and Cas are still sitting. Sam turns his head just in time to see Cas lick wing sauce off of his fingertips and his brother's eyes go dark and lusty as he tracks the movements of the angel's tongue. It makes the entire group at the bar look uncomfortable, Sam included.

God, no one is helping Sam here. _No one_.

"We don't abide by that kind of sin going on right in front of our eyes," Pete presses stubbornly, and gets up from his seat. His considerable paunch makes Sam take a step backwards to avoid getting belly-brushed. "So you can take your blasphemous, fairy brother and his stupid twink man friend and go ahead and run yourselves out of town before we have to take things into our own hands. They can bring hell and damnation upon themselves for their blasphemous ways, but we won't sit here and be privy to it."

Sam likes to think he's a reasonable person. For someone who had been raised to kill monsters, drink lots of booze, and generally suffer through a miserable existence looking in from the fringes of society, Sam likes to believe that he isn't so cut apart from normal people that they are beyond his understanding or sympathy.

But there are some things about normal people that really bug the crap out of him.

And holy _shit_, Dean and Cas both have been through so much, have suffered and endured and killed and _died_ so that idiotic motherfuckers like Pete and Bob and this whole group of morons can go about living their stupid, tiny existences, not knowing what's out there, not knowing what has been lost and fought over for_ their sakes_ by the two people sitting quietly by themselves on the other side of the bar.

Dean and Cas are just eating some freaking hotwings, okay.

Once, back at Stanford, Sam and Jess had had a fight about something early in their relationship. It had probably been something ridiculous because he can't remember what it was about for the life of him now. Anyway, in that fight, she had told him that what she liked about Sam was that he was warm and comforting and bright, like a sunny day. But then she'd said there was a flip side to that and sometimes he'd get these huge, unpredictable flashes of temper, like he'd been holding back all the little things that bothered him for so long, until he couldn't anymore, and they'd suddenly just burst forward all in one go, catching the flame of his warmth and using it to burn bright enough to incinerate the entire atmosphere. "It's like a solar flair," she'd told him plainly, probably because they'd been taking Earth Sciences together that semester. She went on to say she couldn't predict when these things would happen, didn't know how to deal with them except to ride them out and hope that Sam would return to equilibrium before too long, before he set fire to everything around him.

He'd been mortified and instantly apologetic to her when she'd said all that because that description had reminded him a little too much of John, and from there, he'd tried his very best to rein in those moments of heated, unreasonable anger, at least when he'd been with her. He hadn't wanted to be like his father at all.

What Sam now knows is that she'd been absolutely right about him. He's still reasonable about most things, still a warm, understanding person with a lot of sympathy and a big heart. Between him and Dean, he is also usually the one who thinks the most rationally, who strives to understand both sides of an argument, and who always attempts to mitigate things peacefully before resorting to his fists. This is how he is about 95% of the time.

But like a true Winchester, he is also absolutely fucking _unreasonable_ when it comes to his family, and when he is pushed just enough, the results are often like a spark hitting dry tinder, or, as Jess had put it, an explosion of unexpected energy curling hot and bright around the sun.

Either way, Sam, under just the right circumstances, has a tendency to burn. It's a Winchester thing.

And so, this perfect conflagration of events—namely the idea that any Winchester is going to hell ever again for something so _stupid—_ is how Sam forgets about being reasonable and ends up punching Pete right in the face.

And because he can apparently be a real scary badass if he wants to be (following in Dean's footsteps yet again, obviously) when Sam punches Pete, he does it _really, really well_.

In fact, he's does it all so well that he's taken out the entire posse by himself by the time Dean and Cas get torn out of their One True Love Bubble and realize that there is a melee taking place on the other side of the establishment, of which one Samuel Winchester is in the very center of, wreaking havoc like a vengeful god. Dean and Cas probably gape a little at the sight.

Which is why Sam is already lecturing about the evils of bigotry and ignorance and a need for education and social justice to a pile of groaning townies by the time Dean—looking slightly disbelieving—regains enough of his faculties to grab his brother by the shoulder and hastily pull him out of the bar.

Sam is still coming down from his sudden, fiery burst of temper by the time they get back to the hotel, and Cas, looking reluctant, announces that he should go; apparently Raphael and his faction of conservative groupies upstairs are lobbying to take away a vessel's right to choose, which is gaining some popularity amongst the angelic ranks the more he preaches it, for whatever idiotic reason. Castiel reaches out, squeezes Dean's shoulder once, tenderly, and then wordlessly disappears to leave the brothers to speak amongst themselves. The promise of a swift return is in his eyes, and need not be said out loud.

"Well?" Dean demands eventually, once he stomps back into their hotel room and begins throwing their things into their bags in preparation to hightail it out of town before the local sheriff's department comes gunning for his brother for beating the crap out of some townies for no apparent reason. "Want to tell me what that was all about?"

Sam looks helpless. "Nothing." Pause. "I mean, it was _something_, It's just…" he huffs in frustration. "They were saying…things," he offers lamely after a beat, when he doesn't want to exactly repeat what he'd heard, especially since the worst of it was implicit in Pete's _tone_.

Dean looks at him in a way that makes Sam wince and duck his head a little and feel all of five-years-old again; in that moment he seriously can't believe Pete and Co. had thought they could have stood up to this, even if the odds had been well in their favor.

"I'll bet they had some things to say," Dean grunts simply, stuffing his shaving kit into his bag. "Assholes weren't exactly subtle, but that doesn't mean you can randomly beat the crap out of them in a bar on their own turf, Sammy."

Sam sputters. "You _noticed_?"

Dean gives him a completely different look at that, one that's part wounded and part incredulous. "Yeah, I'm not friggin' blind, man." He stuffs Dad's journal into his bag next and motions for Sam to pack up the computer.

Sam obeys, and sighs to himself when he gets it. "You noticed but you didn't care." Dean never cares what strangers think about him, never has. Because he can beat them up. And his cute angel boyfriend can probably make them explode like water balloons at that. Sam feels kind of stupid when he suddenly remembers all this, but no less indignant on his brother's behalf.

Dean shrugs as he zips up his bag and tosses Sam's duffel at him. "Nothing they could do about it either way," is his only answer, and despite being a giant, Sam feels about two inches tall as he follows his brother back out to the car again.

"Still," Sam says, as he plops down into the passenger seat, feeling his temper spark again at the reminder of the looks on those men's faces. "_Still_." He grits his teeth to hold back all the very mean things he wants to say about people like Pete, who don't understand a goddamned thing about anything bigger than themselves. "They were going to try to do something. They would have started something anyway. I just… preemptively responded. I mean, they definitely weren't afraid of me, and I'm way bigger than you."

Dean snorts as he starts the car. "Of course they weren't afraid of you. You walk like a pussy," he reminds Sam matter-of-factly, as they pull out of the hotel parking lot with a screech and a rumble and proceed to put that godforsaken place as far back in the rearview as the remaining daylight hours will allow. "No one's afraid of you at first glance." He grins as he says this, to let Sam know that there are no hard feelings behind his assessment.

"I hate you and your face," Sam gripes back, sulkily. He feels the fires of his temper ebb with Dean's easy forgiveness though, and settles into his seat with a sigh.

Dean just snorts at that and keeps driving, eyes sparkling a mixture of amusement and unrepentant fondness. "Thanks, Sam," is all he has to say about anything a few minutes later, his voice soft as they blow past the county line without looking back.

"Yeah okay," Sam breathes, and eyes Dean as the sun starts to dip under the horizon, the Impala effortlessly eating up the miles between here and there in the meantime. Dean's head is held high, his free hand drumming an errant (and now embarrassingly familiar) love song's rhythm on his knee, and there is a look of peaceful ease around the lines of his face even now, despite the fact that he may have sung all about his big gay love for an angel in public a scant few hours ago and caused a bigoted uproar because of it.

Dean obviously doesn't care what the world thinks. Probably because he knows he can beat the holy hell out of any and all challengers when it comes right down to it. It's all in the walk, or something.

Grudgingly, Sam takes in the sight of his brother like that and supposes that learning to walk just like Dean does might not be such a bad idea after all.

He figures that for a person who is always determinedly following in his big brother's footsteps, it's probably inevitable anyway.

**END**


End file.
